1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to three-dimensional (3D) graphics applications, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for providing access to multiple views using a single orientation/controller widget.
2. Description of the Related Art
When working with three-dimensional (3D) data (i.e., in a graphics application), a number of orientations of the data are needed by the user to provide a better understanding of the shape and size of the geometry being viewed. Accessing a number of views of the data is difficult and involves several user steps with prior art methods. In addition, prior art controllers that are used to view the orientation contain a limited amount of information. What is needed is a method and capability to easily view multiple different orientations as well as information about such a potential orientation. Such problems may be better understood with an explanation of prior art graphics applications and orientation view capabilities.
Typical 3D authoring applications allow users to create, manipulate, and view 3D geometry on two-dimensional displays. By rendering a view of the virtual scene from a particular viewpoint, a 2D image can be shown on the display. While this allows a rich and effective means of simulating the experience of viewing real 3D objects and scenes, controlling the viewpoint and understanding the position of the viewpoint relative to the object is a significant task for the user.
Early primitive 3D graphics applications were command line driven, allowing users to directly enter and query the numerical position, orientation, and other properties of a virtual camera which defined a particular viewpoint. With the advent of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), numerical entry and query were largely replaced by graphical representations of the 3D camera in the scene and direct manipulation of it either while viewing through the camera or while looking at it through another camera. In addition, preset viewpoints commonly used in the drafting and design fields, such as “top view”, “side view”, etc., could be selected through menus. However, there are many shortcomings to this approach and more advanced scene orientation methods are possible.
One prior art methodology, developed by the assignee of the present application, provides for the use of a “viewcube” (also referred to as “CubeCompass”) and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,782,319 identified above and incorporated by reference herein. The viewcube is a cube icon representing different viewpoints in a three-dimensional (3D) scene. When the view of the scene is changed by the user, the view cube rotates to show the orientation of the new view. Accordingly, current viewcube controllers provide a convenient way of seeing the camera angle of an existing scene or model in the viewport. The viewcube provides a handy way of knowing whether the scene/model is being viewed from front, back, left, right, top-left, top-right and so on. However, such viewcubes do not provide any additional information for the scene apart from camera angle.